524f 



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of Life 



Rossetti 



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Copyright )j" 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



The House of Life 

A Sonnet-Sequence 



THE LARK CLASSICS 



The House of Life 

BY y^ 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti 

A Sonnet-Sequence: with 

An Introduction by 

Howard V. Sutherland 



Godfrey A. S. Wieners 

AT THE SIGN OF THE LARK 
NEW YORK 



|f:» AR^ ^^ ymr^ Mo. 

coi«v n. 






Copyright, 190a, by 
Godfrey A. S. Wieners 



UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON 
AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



;7 

\ Contents 

J Page 

s. Introduction xi 

PART I 
Youth and Change 

Love Enthroned • 3 

Bridal Birth 4 

Love's Redemption 5 

Lovesight 6 

Heart's Hope 7 

The Kiss 8 

Nuptial Sleep (Placata Venere) 9 

Supreme Surrender lo 

Love's Lovers 1 1 

Passion and Worship 12 

The Portrait 13 

The Love-Letter 14 

The Lovers' Walk 15 

Youth's Antiphony 16 

V 



Contents 

Youth and Change (^co7itinued) Pj^cb 

Youth's Spring-Tribute 17 

The Birth-Bond 18 

A Day of Love 19 

Beauty's Pageant 20 

Genius in Beauty 21 

Silent Noon 22 

Gracious Moonlight 23 

Love-Sweetness 24 

Heart's Haven 25 

Love's Baubles 26 

Pride of Youth 27 

Winged Hours 28 

Mid-Rapture 29 

Heart's Compass 30 

Soul-Light 31 

The Moonstar 32 

Last Fire 33 

Her Gifts 34 

Equal Troth 35 

Venus Victrix 36 

The Dark Glass 37 

The Lamp's Shrine ^S 

vi 



Contents 

Youth and Change {continued) p^^cb 

Life-in-Love 39 

The Love-Moon 40 

The Morrow's Message 41 

Sleepless Dreams 42 

Severed Selves 43 

Through Death to Love 44 

Hope Overtaken 45 

Love and Hope 46 

Cloud and Wind 47 

Secret Parting 48 

Parted Love 49 

Broken Music 50 

Death-in-Love 51 

Willowwood 52 

Without Her 56 

Love's Fatality 57 

Stillborn Love 58 

True Woman 59 

I Herself 59 

II Her Love 60 

III Her Heaven 61 

Love's Last Gift 62 

vii 



Contents 



PART II 

Change and Fate p^gb 

Transfigured Life . 65 

The Song-Throe 66 

The Soul's Sphere 67 

Inclusiveness , . 68 

Ardour and Memory 69 

Known in Vain . 70 

The Heart of the Night , . 71 

The Landmark 72 

A Dark Day , 73 

Autumn Idleness . 74 

The Hill Summit 75 

The Choice 76 

Old and New Art .,......., 79 

I St. Luke the Painter 79 

II Not as These 80 

III The Husbandmen 81 

Soul's Beauty 82 

Body's Beauty 83 

The Monochord 84 

From Dawn to Noon . . 85 

viii 



Contents 

Change and Fate {continued) p^^^ 

Memorial Thresholds d>6 

Hoarded Joy 87 

Barren Spring ^S 

Farewell to the Glen 89 

Vain Virtues 90 

Lost Days 91 

Death's Songsters . . , 92 

Hero's Lamp 93 

The Trees of the Garden 94 

" Retro Me, Sathana ! " 95 

Lost on Both Sides 96 

The Sun's Shame 97 

Michaelangelo's Kiss 99 

The Vase of Life 100 

Life the Beloved loi 

A Superscription 102 

He and I 103 

New-born Death 104 

The One Hope 106 



IX 



Introdudion 

1 1 /"ERE I exiled in a strange country and there denied 
the companionship of sympathetic men and women, 
and were I allowed the choice of but three or four books 
to afford me the skimmed consolation that comes of reading, 
I would include among that limited number The House of 
Life. Time was when the Rubaiydt might have taken its 
place — a time when roses and red wine and the redder lips 
of Perdita were everything. In the hey-day of youth there 
is much about the old Persian that seems attractive enough, 
and you may have noticed that it is always the very young 
who, after many readings, remain enthusiastic about him. But 
as we grow older, and the inexpressibly sad notes that 
constitute the music of life have repeated themselves so 
often as to become wearisome, we no longer find pleasure 
in the poetry that reminds us thereof, nor do we turn a 
gracious ear to the philosophy of misfortune and tears. In 

xi 



Introdudiion 

exile, therefore, or when apart from your fellows, the Rubaiydt 
would offer but poor solace to one's wounded spirit. It 
would awaken regret instead of allaying it ; it would remind 
of things that were best forgotten when once the age at 
which they are natural is over and done with. 

But how different one's sensations after a perusal of the 
haunting sonnets in The House of Life ! Open the book 
at random and let the eye read what line it falls on, and 
you will be made aware that here is the work of a master — 
one who has tried every note and chord on Love's low lute, 
and is gifted with an angel's song to tell of his passion. 
And, moreover, it is not of the love suggested by tinkling 
and ankleted feet, by the music of high-sounding shawms 
and throbbing drums, or the subtle perfume of heavy-hearted 
musk and roses that he sings. Nay. These sonnets recall 
the chiselled beauty of the Cythersean, the calm broad brow 
of Vittoria Colonna, the aureoled head of Beatrice. They 
make us think of all beautiful women whose purity and 
virtue has ever gladdened the souls of men and made life 
splendid and bearable. They make us think of the fair 
one's who, like pitying sunbeams upon forest paths, have 

xii 



Introdudtion 

crossed the darkened ways of our lives and left in the Past 
a radiance to which in dreams we look yearningly back- 
ward. Neither the wine-bibber nor the dance girl is ad- 
mitted to this House ; nor does the tavern receive mention 
in it by so much as a single line. And yet we find ourselves 
perusing the pages over and over again, turning first this 
leaf down and then that, and marking with unlovely but 
loving pencil the passages that speak so directly to our 
hearts. I know of no other book of poetry so likely to ap- 
peal to the man or woman who has lived and loved as this ; 
with the exception of the Sonnets from the Portuguese and 
the Love Letters of a Violinist there has never appeared 
in print the portrayal of a personal passion which so com- 
pletly wins us by its suggestion of what we ourselves have 
desired. 

A writer is always harmed by being classified as one of a 
school ; it is best to be known and remembered as a man. 
Among the Romanticists, the Decadents, the Pre-Raphael- 
ites, the Realists, the leaders have always been creatures of 
strong enough individuality to make the shorter title suffice 
for them ; it is their followers who must receive some titular 

xiii 



Introdudtion 

recognition if they are to be noticed among the numerous 
derelicts that toss upon the sea of literature. As a Pre- 
Raphaelite, perhaps, Rossetti wrote " The Blessed Damo- 
zel; " as a man he wrote " Jenny," and as a man he wrote 
the marvellous sonnet sequence comprising The House of 
Life. As a flawless and exquisite piece of workmanship the 
former poem may take rank and be admired ; but it is to the 
others that we instinctively turn if we wish to discover the 
expression of those feehngs that make the true poet and 
prove him deathless. 

^ Life, Love, God, Death, Immortality — it is of these tre- 
mendous subjects Rossetti sings in the following pages, 
sounding the while no quavering note, although sinking 
sometimes into a minor key when the mood is best expressed 
thereby. To sing cheerfully at all times is neither natural 
nor jfit. All of us wander into the Garden of Gethsemane ; 
all must bear a Cross, and how few escape the agonies of 
crucifixion ! Whether it be for the best or not, it is not for 
us here to determine ; mention is merely made of it lest the 
sad note that appears in this, as in every poet's work, cause 
him to be pronounced pessimistic by the thoughtless, and 

xiv 



Introdudlion 

If haply so my heart might be beguil'd 
To find no terrors in a face so mild, — 
If haply so my weary heart might be 
Unto the new-born milky ejes of thee, 
O Death, before resentment reconcil'd. 



How long, O Death ? And shall thy feet depart 
Still a young child's with mine, or wilt thou stand 

FuUgrown the helpful daughter of my heart, 
What time with thee indeed I reach the strand 

Of the pale wave which knows thee what thou art, 
And drink it in the hollow of thy hand ? 

Life, "wreathing flowers for Death to wear;" Love, 
" Death's pallid neophyte " — these are not thoughts that 
terrify, neither do they make fearful the hour when 

Death's nuptial change 
Leaves us for light the halo of his hair ; 

even if, before that light be granted, it be necessary to 

tread 

the whole 
Of the deep stair ... to the dim shoal 
And weary water of the place of sighs 
And there . . . work deliverance. 
b xvii 



Introduftion 

Having assured us of immortality, having robbed death of 
its terrors, and having suggested the Divinity omnipotent 
on both sides of the great dark as well as in life, is it not 
only right for us to place Rossetti among the writers whose 
ecstatic utterance proves them deeply and sincerely reli- 
gious, assured of an enduring column along the endless aisles 
of the years ? 

Of the sonnets comprising the second part of the sequence, 
and entitled " Change and Fate," not one but furnishes 
food for reflection, and reveals the poet's mind as those con- 
tained in the first part reveal his heart. The very first 
sonnet tells of the necessary mingling of the major and 
minor moods in verse, so that 

from that song-cloud shaped as a man's hand 
There comes the sound as of abundant rain. 

And, again, in the sonnet following, he reiterates the state- 
ment in words so graphic that, once read, they cannot be 

forgotten : 

more dry 
Than the Dead Sea for throats that thirst and sigh 
That song o'er which no singer's lids grew wet. 
xviii 



Introdudtion 

Surely, the "sweet, imperishable tears," of which Swinburne 
writes have wetted the throbbing pages of The House of 
Life! 

It is in this second part that we find the illuminating trio 
of sonnets entitled "The Choice," with the magnificent 
closing sestette quoted at the commencement of this humble 
appreciation; and, for a minor, there is "Hoarded Joy," 
or " Barren Spring," where fate and change are mourned, 
and the poet reminds us that all, all is passing away — even 
"into the wind." And the lesson that is taught in " Lost 
Days " is one all men may learn, especially our men of 
to-day, who in the mad struggle for wealth and position are 
apt to forget that inner self which, " murdered " in this life, 
may prove a relentless accuser through all eternity. What 
woman does not understand the plaint in " He and I ; " 
what man, who has once dreamed the golden dream and 
seen it rudely shattered, will not bend his head over " The 
One Hope " ? The experiences of life are shared in com- 
mon. We are brothers and sisters in sorrow as in joy, for 
the lightning strikes whomsoever it pleases. And though to 
write of these things is granted to but a few, and while of 

xix 



Introduftion 

those who attempt it only the great poet does so without 
hurt to the feeHngs, the sufferers by " change or fate," be 
they men or women, are glad to have others speak for them, 
and give voice to the sentiments that are formulated but 
unexpressed within their shadowed hearts. The ability to 
render this service — the ability to express for us our own 
longings and dreams and desires — is not the least test by 
which to determine the standard of a poet. 

But it is to Part I., to the sonnets included under the head- 
ing Youth and Change, that the reader will turn again and 
again, and wherein will be found the lines most pleasantly 
haunting. For here Rossetti deals almost exclusively with love 
and with the beloved — from Love's throne, "far above all 
passionate wind of welcome and farewell," to her whose "eyes 
smile peace." Here is to be found the very ecstasy of love 
poetry, surpassed in feeling and sentiment not even by the 
sonnets of Shakespeare. In this part of the House will 
wander all lovers who have worshipped at the knees of one 

whose voice, attuned above 
All modulation of the deep-bowered dove, 
Is like a hand laid softly on the soul. 
XX 



Introdudtion 

and all who have known the 

close-companioned inarticulate hour 
When twofold silence was the song of love. 

It is here that the great company of the unhappy can find 
consolation — if consolation is to be gained by the awaken- 
ing of memories of all that made life beautiful before change 
or death dimmed the glory of the dream or ended it forever. 
Or soon or late, the mists descend that veil the sun and 
make the hillsides grey and ghostly ; or soon or late each 
little scheme of individual happiness is undermined and an 
addition made to the ranks of the hopeless. It is only a 
matter of time, and is dependent upon the pleasure of 
Fate. 

Alas for hourly change ! Alas for all 
The loves that from his hand proud Youth lets fall, 
Even as the beads of a told rosary ! 

Is that not the old, old cry — the old grieving over the un- 
changeable ? The hours that once crept by so slowly will 
fly soon enough, and it does not take long for the darkest 
eyes that once brooded above the love-lines of the softest 

xxi 



Introdud:ion 

mouth to lose their splendid fire. Not all take heed of 
the faUing leaves, however, and to them it is possible that 
these sonnets may be as meaningless as is the music of 
the shell, charged with the sorrows of all the seas that still 
mourn the loss of the w^hite-limbed Aphrodite. The few 
whom the lightnings have yet spared, whose eyes still 
" dream against a distant goal," and to whom love is still 
" the ultimate outpost of eternity " — how shall these find 
in this House the anodyne that is offered those others to 
whom the night (and day-time, too) is but 

A thicket hung with masks of mockery 
And watered with the wasteful warmth of tears ? 

Alas, indeed, for hourly change ! Along with Keats we 
might well pray to be as steadfast as the star ; but even if 
we were as sure of ourselves as are the rocks that heed 
neither the breath of the storm-wind nor the eternal wooing 
of great waters, what would avail it when, after all, we are 
but helpless marionettes — suffering, yearning, striving, im- 
mortal marionettes? And the world's lovers are no excep- 
tions to the law. For Sorrow and her grey sisters follow 

xxii 



Introdudion 

close upon the footsteps of all of us, and happy and few, 
indeed, are they who can hide in the dim by-ways of the 
world and escape their notice. Had Rossetti and his sister- 
spirit succeeded in doing so. The House of Life might never 
have been written. 

Howard V. Sutherland. 
New York, 1902. 



xxui 



THE HOUSE OF LIFE 

PART I 
YOUTH AND CHANGE 



A Sonnet is a inomenfs monument, — 

Memorial from the SouVs eternity 

To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be^ 
V/hether for lustra I rite or dire portent, 
Of its own arduous fulness reverent: 

Carve it in ivory or in ebony. 

As Day or Night may rule ; and let Time see 
Its flowering crest impearled and orient. 

A Sonnet is a coi?i : its face reveals 

The soul, — its converse, to what Power V is due : — 
Whether for tribute to the august appeals 

Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue, 
It serve ; or, *mid the dark wharf's cavernous breathy 
In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death, 



LOVE ENTHRONED 

1 MARKED all kindred Powers the heart finds fair 
Truth, with awed lips; and Hope, with eyes 

upcast; 
And Fame, whose loud wings fan the ashen Past 
To signal-fires, Oblivion's flight to scare ; 
And Youth, with still some single golden hair 
Unto his shoulder clinging, since the last 
Embrace wherein two sweet arms held him fast; 
And Life, still wreathing flowers for Death to wear. 

Love's throne was not with these ; but far above 

All passionate wind of welcome and farewell 
He sat in breathless bowers they dream not of; 
Though Truth foreknow Love's heart, and Hope 

foretell. 
And Fame be for Love's sake desirable. 
And Youth be dear, and Life be sweet to Love. 

3 



The House of Life 



BRIDAL BIRTH 

AS when desire, long darkling, dawns, and first 
The mother looks upon the new-born child, 
Even so my Lady stood at gaze and smiled 
When her soul knew at length the Love it nurs'd. 
Born with her hfe, creature of poignant thirst 
And exquisite hunger, at her heart Love lay 
Quickening in darkness, till a voice that day 
Cried on him, and the bonds of birth were burst. 

Now, shadowed by his wings, our faces yearn 
Together, as his fullgrovvn feet now range 
The grove, and his w^arm hands our couch 
prepare : 
Till to his song our bodiless souls in turn 

Be born his children, when Death's nuptial change 
Leaves us for light the halo of his hair. 
4 



Youth and Change 



LOVE'S REDEMPTION 

OTHOU who at Love's hour ecstatically 
Unto my heart dost ever more present, 
Clothed with his fire, thy heart his testament; 
Whom I have neared and felt thy breath to be 
The inmost incense of his sanctuary ; 

Who without speech hast owned him, and, intent 
Upon his will, thy life with mine hast blent, 
And murmured, '' I am thine, thou 'rt one with me ! 

O what from thee the grace, to me the prize, 
And what to Love the glory, — when the whole 
Of the deep stair thou tread'st to the dim shoal 
And weary water of the place of sighs, 
And there dost work deliverance, as thine eyes 
Draw up my prisoned spirit to thy soul ! 
5 



The House of Life 



LOVESIGHT 

WHEN do I see thee most, beloved one ? 
When in the light the spirits of mine eyes 
Before thy face, their altar, solemnize 
The worship of that Love through thee made known? 
Or when in the dusk hours, (we two alone,) 
Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies 
Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies, 
And my soul only sees thy soul its own ? 

O love, my love ! if I no more should see 
Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee, 

Nor image of thine eyes in any spring, — 
How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope 
The ground-wliirl of the perished leaves of Hope, 

The wind of Death's imperishable wing? 
6 



Youth and Change 



PIEART'S HOPE 

BY what word's power, the key of paths untrod, 
Shall I the difficult deeps of Love explore, 
Till parted waves of Song yield up the shore 
Even as that sea which Israel crossed dry-shod ? 
For lo ! in some poor rhythmic period, 
Lady, I fain would tell how evermore 
Thy soul I know not from thy body, nor 
Thee from myself, neither our love from God. 

Yea, in God's name, and Love's, and thine, would I 
Draw from one loving heart such evidence 

As to all hearts all things shall signify ; 
Tender as dawn's first hill-fire, and intense 
As instantaneous penetrating sense. 

In Spring's birth-hour, of other Springs gone by. 

7 



The House of Life 



THE KISS 

WHAT smouldering senses in death's sick delay 
Or seizure of malign vicissitude 
Can rob this body of honor, or denude 
This soul of wedding-raiment worn to-day? 
For lo ! even now my lady's lips did play 
With these my lips such consonant interlude 
As laurelled Orpheus longed for when he wooed 
The half-drawn hungering face with that last lay. 

I was a child beneath her touch, — a man 

When breast to breast we clung, even I and she, — 
A spirit when her spirit looked through me, — 
A god when all our life-breath met to fan 
Our life-blood, till love's emulous ardors ran, 
Fire within fire, desire in deity. 
8 



Youth and Change 



NUPTIAL SLEEP (PLACATA VENERE) 

AT length their long kiss severed, with sweet smart : 
And as the last slow sudden drops are shed 
From sparkling eaves v/hen all the storm has fled, 
So, singly, flagged the pulses of each heart. 
Their bosoms sundered, with the opening start 
Of married flowers to either side outspread 
From the knit stem ; yet still their mouths, burnt 
red, 
Fawned on each other where they lay apart. 

Sleep sank them lower than the tide of dreams, 

And their dreams watched them sink, and slid away ; 

Slowly their souls swam up again, through gleams 
Of watered light and dull-drowned waifs of day; 

Till from some wonder of new woods and streams 
He woke, and wondered more : for there she lay. 
9 



The House of Life 



SUPREME, SURRENDER 

TO all the spirits of Love that wander by 
Along his love-sown harvest-field of sleep 
My lady lies apparent ; and the deep 
Calls to the deep ; and no man sees but I. 
The bliss so long afar, at length so nigh, 

Rests there attained. Methinks proud Love must 

weep 
When Fate's control doth from his harvest reap 
The sacred hour for which the years did sigh. 

First touched, the hand now warm around my neck 
Taught memory long to mock desire : and lo ! 
Across my breast the abandoned hair doth flow, 
Where one shorn tress long stirred the longing ache: 
And next the heart that trembled for its sake 
Lies the queen-heart in sovereign overthrow. 



Youth and Change 



LOVE'S LOVERS 

SOME ladies love the jewels in Love's zone 
And gold-tipped darts he hath for painless play 
In idle scornful hours he flings away ; 
And some that listen to his lute's soft tone 
Do love to vaunt the silver praise their own ; 

Some prize his bhndfold sight; and there be they 
Who kissed his wings which brought him yesterday 
And thank his wings to-day that he is flown. 

My lady only loves the heart of Love : 

Therefore Love's heart, my lady, hath for thee 
His bower of unimagined flower and tree : 
There kneels he now, and all-anhungered of 
Thine eyes gray-ht in shadowing hair above, 
Seals with thy mouth his immortality. 



The House of Life 



PASSION AND WORSHIP 

ONE flame-winged brought a white-winged harp- 
player 
Even where my lady and I lay all alone ; 
Saying : *' Behold, this minstrel is unknown ; 
Bid him depart, for I am minstrel here : 
Only my strains are to Love's dear ones dear." 

Then said I : " Through thine hautboy's rapturous 

tone 
Unto my lady still this harp makes moan, 
And still she deems the cadence deep and clear." 

Then said my lady : '' Thou art Passion of Love, 
And this Love's Worship : both he plights to me. 
Thy mastering music walks the sunlit sea: 
But where wan water trembles in the grove 
And the wan moon is all the light thereof, 
This harp still makes my name voluntary." 

12 



Youth and Change 



THE PORTRAIT 

OLORD of all compassionate control, 
O Love ! let this my lady's picture glow 
Under my hand to praise her name, and show 
Even of her inner self the perfect whole: 
That he who seeks her beauty's furthest goal, 
Beyond the light that the sweet glances throw 
And refluent wave of the sweet smile, may know 
The very sky and sea-line of her soul. 

Lo ! it is done. Above the enthroning threat 
The mouth's mould testifies of voice and kiss, 
The shadowed eyes remember and foresee. 
Her face is made her shrine. Let all men note 
That in all years (O Love, thy gift is this ! ) 

They that would look on her must come to me. 
13 



The House of Life 



THE LOVE-LETTER 

■^l FARMED by her hand and shadowed by her 

As close she leaned and poured her heart through 

thee, 
Whereof the articulate throbs accompany 
The smooth black stream that makes thy whiteness 

fair, — 
Sweet fluttering sheet, even of her breath aware, — 
Oh, let thy silent song disclose to me 
That soul wherewith her lips and eyes agree 
Like married music in Love's answering air. 

Fain had I watched her when, at some fond thought, 
Her bosom to the writing closelier press'd. 
And her breast's secrets peered into her breast; 
When, through eyes raised an instant, her soul sought 
My soul, and from the sudden confluence caught 
The words that made her love the loveliest. 
14 



Youth and Change 



THE LOVERS' WALK 

SWEET twining hedgeflowers wind-stirred in no 
wise 
On this June day ; and hand that clings in hand : — • 
Still glades ; and meeting faces scarcely fann'd : — 
An osier-odored stream that draws the skies 
Deep to its heart; and mirrored eyes in eyes : — 
Fresh hourly wonder o'er the Summer land 
Of light and cloud; and two souls softly spann'd 
With one o'erarching heaven of smiles and sighs : — 

Even such their path, whose bodies lean unto 
Each other's visible sweetness amorously, — 
Whose passionate hearts lean by Love's high degree 

Together on his heart for ever true. 

As the cloud-foaming firmamental blue 
Rests on the blue line of a foamless sea. 
15 



The House of Life 



YOUTH'S ANTIPHONY 

" T LOVE you, sweet : how can you ever learn 
1 How much I love you? " " You I love even so, 
And so I learn it." " Sweet, you cannot know 

How fair you are." *' If fair enough to earn 

Your love, so much is all my love's concern." 

" My love grows hourly, sweet." " Mine too doth 

grow, 
Yet love seemed full so many hours ago ! " 

Thus lovers speak, till kisses claim their turn. 

Ah ! happy they to whom such words as these 

In youth have served for speech the whole day 

long, 
Hour after hour, remote from the world's throng. 
Work, contest, fame, all life's confederate pleas, — 
What while Love breathed in sighs and silences 
Through two blent souls one rapturous undersong. 
i6 



Youth and Change 



YOUTH'S SPRING-TRIBUTE 

ON this sweet bank your head thrice sweet and 
dear 
I lay, and spread your hair on either side, 
And see the new-born woodflowers bashful-eyed 
Look through the golden tresses here and there. 
On these debatable borders of the year 

Spring's foot half falters ; scarce she yet may know 
The leafless blackthorn-blossom from the snow ; 
And through her bowers the wind's way still is clear. 

But April's sun strikes down the glades to-day ; 
So shut your eyes upturned, and feel my kiss 

Creep, as the Spring now thrills through every spray, 
Up your warm throat to your warm lips : for this 
Is even the hour of Love's sworn suit-service, 

With whom cold hearts are counted cast-away. 
2 17 



The House of Life 



THE BIRTH-BOND 

HAVE you not noted, in some family 
Where two were born of a first marriage-bed, 
How still they own their gracious bond, though fed 
And nursed on the forgotten breast and knee? — 
How to their father's children they shall be 
In act and thought of one goodwill; but each 
Shall for the other have, in silence speech, 
And in a word complete community? 

Even so, when first I saw you, seemed it, love, 
That among souls allied to mine was yet 

One nearer kindred than life hinted of. 

O born with me somewhere that men forget, 
And though in years of sight and sound unmet, 

Known for my soul's birth-partner well enough ! 

i8 



Youth and Change 



A DAY OF LOVE 

THOSE envied places which do know her well, 
And are so scornful of this lonely place, 
Even now for once are emptied of her grace : 
Nowhere but here she is ; and while Love's spell 
From his predominant presence doth compel 
All alien hours, an outworn populace, 
The hours of Love fill full the echoing space 
With sweet confederate music favorable. 

Now many memories make solicitous 

The deHcate love-lines of her mouth, till, lit 
With quivering fire, the words take wing from it ; 

As here between our kisses we sit thus 

Speaking of things remembered, and so sit 

Speechless while things forgotten call to us. 

19 



The House of Life 



BEAUTY'S PAGEANT 

WHAT dawn-pulse at the heart of heaven, or last 
Incarnate flower of culminating day, — 
What marshalled marvels on the skirts of May, 
Or song full-quired, sweet June's encomiast; 
What glory of change by nature's hand amass'd 
Can vie with all those moods of varying grace 
Which o'er one loveliest woman's form and face 
Within this hour, within this room, have pass'd? 

Love's very vesture and elect disguise 

Was each fine movement, — wonder new-begot 
Of lily or swan or swan-stemmed galiot; 

Joy to his sight who now the sadlier sighs, 

Parted again ; and sorrow yet for eyes 

Unborn, that read these words and saw her not. 

20 



Youth and Change 



GENIUS IN BEAUTY 

BEAUTY like hers is genius. Not the call 
Of Homer's or of Dante's heart sublime, — 
Not Michael's hand furrowing the zones of time, - 
Is more with compassed mysteries musical ; 
Nay, not in Spring's or Summer's sweet footfall 
More gathered gifts exuberant Life bequeathes 
Than doth this sovereign face, whose love-spell 
breathes 
Even from its shadowed contour on the wall. 

As many men are poets in their youth, 

But for one sweet-strung soul the wires prolong 
Even through all change the indomitable song; 
So in likewise the envenomed years, whose tooth 
Rends shallower grace with ruin void of ruth, 
Upon this beauty's power shall wreak no wrong. 

21 



The House of Life 



SILENT NOON 

YOUR hands He open in the long fresh grass, — 
The finger-points look through like rosy blooms 
Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and 
glooms 
'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass. 
All round our nest, far as the eye can pass, 
Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge 
Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge. 
'T is visible silence, still as the hour-glass. 

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly 
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky : — 

So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above. 
Oh ! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower, 
This close-companioned inarticulate hour 

When twofold silence was the song of love. 

22 



Youth and Change 



GRACIOUS MOONLIGHT 

EVEN as the moon grows queenlier in mid-space 
When the sky darkens, and her cloud-rapt car 
Thrills with intenser radiance from afar, — 
So lambent, lady, beams thy sovereign grace 
When the drear soul desires thee. Of that face 
What shall be said, — which, like a governing star, 
Gathers and garners from all things that are 
Their silent penetrative loveliness? 

O'er water-daisies and wild waifs of Spring, 

There where the iris rears its gold-crowned sheaf 
With flowering rush and sceptred arrow-leaf. 
So have I marked Queen Dian, in bright ring 
Of cloud above and wave below, take wing 

And chase night's gloom, as thou the spirit's grief. 
23 



The House of Life 



LOVE-SWEETNESS 

SWEET dimness of her loosened hair's downfall 
About thy face ; her sweet hands round thy head 
In gracious fostering union garlanded ; 
Her tremulous smiles ; her glances' sweet recall 
Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial; 

Her mouth's culled sweetness by thy kisses shed 
On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led 
Back to her mouth which answers there for all : — 

What sweeter than these things, except the thing 
In lacking which all these would lose their sweet : — 
The confident heart's still fervor : the swift beat 
And soft subsidence of the spirit's wing, 
Then when it feels, in cloud-girt wayfaring, 
The breath of kindred plumes against its feet? 
24 



Youth and Change 



HEART'S HAVEN 

SOMETIMES she is a child within mine arms, — 
Cowering beneath dark wings that love must 
chase, — 
With still tears showering and averted face, 
Inexplicably filled with faint alarms : 
And oft from mine own spirit's hurtling harms 
I crave the refuge of her deep embrace, — 
Against all ills the fortified strong place 
And sweet reserve of sovereign counter-charms. 

And Love, our light at night and shade at noon, 
Lulls us to rest with songs, and turns away 
All shafts of shelterless tumultuous day. 
Like the moon's growth, his face gleams through his 

tune; 
And as soft waters warble to the moon, 

Our answering spirits chime one roundelay. 
25 



The House of Life 



LOVE'S BAUBLES 

I STOOD where Love in brimming armfuls bore 
Slight wanton flowers and foolish toys of fruit : 
And round him ladies thronged in warm pursuit, 
Fingered and lipped and proffered the strange store. 
And from one hand the petal and the core 

Savored of sleep ; and cluster and curled shoot 
Seemed from another hand like shame's salute, — 
Gifts that I felt my cheek was blushing for. 

At last Love bade my Lady give the same : 
And as I looked, the dew was light thereon; 
And as I took them, at her touch they shone 

With inmost heaven-hue of the heart of flame. 

And then Love said : *' Lo ! when the hand is hers, 
Follies of love are love's true ministers." 
26 



Youth and Change 



PRIDE OF YOUTH 

EVEN as a child, of sorrow that we give 
The dead, but little in his heart can find, 
Since without need of thought to his clear mind 
Their turn it is to die and his to live : — 
Even so the winged New Love smiles to receive 
Along his eddying plumes the auroral wind, 
Nor, forward glorying, casts one look behind 
Where night-rack shrouds the Old Love fugitive. 

There is a change in every hour's recall. 
And the last cowslips in the fields we see 
On the same day with the first corn-poppy. 

Alas for hourly change ! Alas for all 

The loves that from his hand proud Youth lets fall, 
Even as the beads of a told rosary ! 
27 



The House of Life 



WINGED HOURS 

EACH hour until we meet is as a bird 
That wings from far his gradual way along 
The rustling covert of my soul, — his song 
Still loudlier trilled through leaves more deeply stirr'd : 
But at the hour of meeting, a clear word 

Is every note he sings, in Love's own tongue ; 
Yet, Love, thou know'st the sweet strain suffers 
wrong. 
Full oft through our contending joys unheard. 

What of that hour at last, when for her sake 
No wing may fly to me nor song may flow; 
When, wandering round my life unleaved, I know 

The bloodied feathers scattered in the brake, 
And think how she, far from me, with like eyes 

Sees through the untuneful bough the wingless skies? 

28 



Youth and Change 



MID-RAPTURE 

THOU lovely and beloved, thou my love ; 
Whose kiss seems still the first; whose sum- 
moning eyes, 
Even now, as for our love-world's new sunrise, 
Shed very dawn ; whose voice, attuned above 
All modulation of the deep-bowered dove, 
Is like a hand laid softly on the soul ; 
Whose hand is hke a sweet voice to control 
Those worn tired brows it hath the keeping of: — 

What word can answer to thy word, — what gaze 
To thine, which now absorbs within its sphere 
My worshipping face, till I am mirrored there 

Light-circled in a heaven of deep-drawn rays ? 

What clasp, what kiss mine inmost heart can prove, 
O lovely and beloved, O my love? 
29 



The House of Life 



HEART'S COMPASS 

SOMETIMES thou seem'st not as thyself alone, 
But as the meaning of all things that are ; 
A breathless wonder, shadowing forth afar 
Some heavenly solstice hushed and halcyon ; 
Whose unstirred lips are music's visible tone ; 
Whose eyes the sun-gate of the soul unbar. 
Being of its furthest fires oracular ; — 
The evident heart of all life sown and mown. 

Even such Love is; and is not thy name Love? 
Yea, by thy hand the Love-god rends apart 
All gathering clouds of Night's ambiguous art; 

Flings them far down, and sets thine eyes above ; 

And simply, as some gage of flower or glove, 
Stakes with a smile the world against thy heart. 
30 



Youth and Change 



SOUL-LIGHT 

WHAT other woman could be loved like you, 
Or how of you should love possess his fill? 
After the fulness of all rapture, still, — 
As at the end of some deep avenue 
A tender glamour of day, — there comes to view 
Far in your eyes a yet more hungering thrill, — 
Such fire as Love's soul-winnowing hands distil 
Even from his inmost ark of light and dew. 

And as the traveller triumphs with the sun, 

Glorying in heat's mid-height, yet startide brings 
Wonder new-born, and still fresh transport springs 
From limpid lambent hours of day begun ; — 

Even so, through eyes and voice, your soul doth 

move 
My soul with changeful light of infinite love. 
31 



The House of Life 



THE MOONSTAR 

LADY, I thank thee for thy loveliness, 
Because my lady is more lovely still. 
Glorying I gaze, and yield with glad goodwill 
To thee thy tribute; by whose sweet-spun dress 
Of delicate life Love labors to assess 

My lady's absolute queendom ; saying, " Lo ! 
How high this beauty is, which yet doth show 
But as that beauty's sovereign votaress." 

Lady, I saw thee with her, side by side ; 

And as, when night's fair fires their queen surround, 

An emulous star too near the moon will ride, — 
Even so thy rays within her luminous bound 
Were traced no more ; and by the light so drown'd, 

Lady, not thou but she was glorified. 

32 



Youth and Change 



LAST FIRE 

LOVE, through your spirit and mine what summer 
eve 
Now glows with glory of all things possess'd, 
Since this day's sun of rapture filled the west 
And the light sweetened as the fire took leave? 
Awhile now softlier let your bosom heave, 
As in Love's harbor, even that loving breast. 
All care takes refuge while we sink to rest, 
And mutual dreams the bygone bliss retrieve. 

Many the days that Winter keeps in store. 
Sunless throughout, or whose brief sun-glimpses 
Scarce shed the heaped snow through the naked 
trees. 
This day at least was Summer's paramour. 
Sun-colored to the imperishable core 

With sweet well-being of love and full heart's ease. 
.3 33 



The House of Life 



HER GIFTS 

HIGH grace, the dower of queens ; and therewithal 
Some wood-born wonder's sweet simplicity; 
A glance like water brimming with the sky 
Or hyacinth-light where forest-shadows fall; 
Such thrilling pallor of cheek as doth enthral 

The heart ; a mouth whose passionate forms imply 
All music and all silence held thereby; 
Deep golden locks, her sovereign coronal ; 
A round reared neck, meet column of Love's shrine 
To cling to when the heart takes sanctuary ; 
Hands which for ever at Love's bidding be, 
And soft-stirred feet still answering to his sign : — 
These are her gifts, as tongue may tell them o'er. 
Breathe low her name, my soul ; for that means 
more. 

34 



Youth and Change 



EQUAL TROTH 

NOT by one measure mayst thou mete our love ; 
For how should I be loved as I love thee? — 
I, graceless, joyless, lacking absolutely 
All gifts that with thy queenship best behove ; — 
Thou, throned in every heart's elect alcove. 

And crowned with garlands culled from every tree, 
Which for no head but thine, by Love's decree, 
All beauties and all mysteries interwove. 

But here thine eyes and lips yield soft rebuke : — 
" Then only," (say'st thou) " could I love thee less, 
When thou couldst doubt my love's equality." 
Peace, sweet! If not to sum but worth we look, — 
Thy heart's transcendence, not my heart's excess, — 
Then more a thousandfold thou lov'st than L 
35 



The House of Life 



VENUS VICTRIX 

COULD Juno's self more sovereign presence wear 
Than thou, 'mid other ladies throned in grace? — 
Or Pallas, when thou bend'st with soul-stilled face 
O'er poet's page gold-shadowed in thy hair? 
Dost thou than Venus seem less heavenly fair 
When o'er the sea of love's tumultuous trance 
Hovers thy smile, and mingles with thy glance 
That sweet voice like the last wave murmuring there? 

Before such triune loveliness divine 

Awestruck I ask, which goddess here most claims 
The prize that, howsoe'er adjudged, is thine? 

Then Love breathes low the sweetest of thy names ; 
And Venus Victrix to my heart doth bring 
Herself, the Helen of her guerdoning. 

36 



Youth and Change 



THE DARK GLASS 

NOT I myself know all my love for thee : 
How should I reach so far, who cannot weigh 
To-morrow's dower by gage of yesterday? 
Shall birth and death, and all dark names that be 
As doors and windows bared to some loud sea, 

Lash deaf mine ears and blind my face with spray; 
And shall my sense pierce love, — the last relay 
And ultimate outpost of eternity? 

Lo ! what am I to Love, the lord of all ? 

One murmuring shell he gathers from the sand, — 
One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand. 

Yet through thine eyes he grants me clearest call 

And veriest touch of powers primordial 
That any hour-girt life may understand. 
37 



The House of Life 



THE LAMP'S SHRINE 

SOMETIMES I fain would find in thee some fault, 
That I might love thee still in spite of it : 
Yet how should our Lord Love curtail one whit 
Thy perfect praise whom most he would exalt? 
Alas ! he can but make my heart's low vault 
Even in men's sight unworthier, being lit 
By thee, who thereby show'st more exquisite 
Like fiery chrysoprase in deep basalt. 

Yet will I nowise shrink ; but at Love's shrine 
Myself within the beams his brow doth dart 
Will set the flashing jewel of thy heart 

In that dull chamber where it deigns to shine : 
For lo ! in honor of thine excellencies 
My heart takes pride to show how poor it is. 
38 



Youth and Change 



LIFE-IN-LOVE 

NOT in thy body is thy life at all 
But in this lady's lips and hands and eyes ; 
Through these she yields thee life that vivifies 
What else were sorrow's servant and death's thrall, 
Look on thyself without her, and recall 

The waste remembrance and forlorn surmise 
That lived but in a dead-drawn breath of sighs 
O'er vanished hours and hours eventual. 

Even so much life hath the poor tress of hair 
Which, stored apart, is all love hath to show 
For heart-beats and for fire-heats long ago ; 

Even so much life endures unknown, even where, 
'Mid change the changeless night environeth. 
Lies all that golden hair undimmed in death. 
39 



The House of Life 



THE LOVE-MOON 

" TXT' HEN that dead face, bowered in the furthest 
V V years, 

Which once was all the life years held for thee, 
Can now scarce bide the tides of memory 

Cast on thy soul a Httle spray of tears, — 

How canst thou gaze into these eyes of hers 
Whom now thy heart delights in, and not see 
Within each orb Love's philtred euphrasy 

Make them of buried troth remembrancers?" 

** Nay, pitiful Love, nay, loving Pity ! Well 

Thou knowest that in these twain I have confess'd 

Two very voices of thy summoning bell. 

Nay, Master, shall not Death make manifest 

In these the culminant changes which approve 

The love-moon that must light my soul to Love?" 

40 



Youth and Change 



THE MORROW'S MESSAGE 

" nPHOU Ghost," I said, ** and is thy name To- 
1 day? — 

Yesterday's son, with such an abject brow ! — 
And can To-morrow be more pale than thou ? " 

While yet I spoke, the silence answered: ** Yea, 

Henceforth our issue is all grieved and gray. 
And each beforehand makes such poor avow 
As of old leaves beneath the budding bough 

Or night-drift that the sundawn shreds away." 

Then cried I : " Mother of many malisons, 
O Earth, receive me to thy dusty bed ! " 
But therewithal the tremulous silence said : 
" Lo ! Love yet bids thy lady greet thee once : — 
Yea, twice, — whereby thy life is still the sun's ; 
And thrice, — whereby the shadow of death is dead." 
41 



The House of Life 



SLEEPLESS DREAMS 

GIRT in dark growths, yet glimmering with one 
star, 
O night desirous as the nights of youth ! 
Why should my heart within thy spell, forsooth. 
Now beat, as the bride's finger-pulses are 
Quickened within the girdling golden bar? 

What wings are these that fan my pillow smooth ? 
And why does Sleep, waved back by Joy and Ruth, 
Tread softly round and gaze at me from far? 

Nay, night deep-leaved ! And would Love feign in 
thee 
Some shadowy palpitating grove that bears 
Rest' for man's eyes and music for his ears? 
O lonely night ! art thou not known to me, 
A thicket hung with masks of mockery 

And watered with the wasteful warmth of tears? 
42 



Youth and Change 



SEVERED SELVES 

TWO separate divided silences, 
Which, brought together, would find loving voice ; 
Two glances which together would rejoice 
In love, now lost like stars beyond dark trees ; 
Two hands apart whose touch alone gives ease ; 
Two bosoms which, heart-shrined with mutual flame, 
Would, meeting in one clasp, be made the same; 
Two souls, the shores wave-mocked of sundering 
seas : — 

Such are we now. Ah ! may our hope forecast 
Indeed one hour again, when on this stream 
Of darkened love once more the light shall gleam ? — 

An hour how slow to come, how quickly past, — 
Which blooms and fades, and only leaves at last, 
Faint as shed flowers, the attenuated dream. 
43 



The House of Life 



THROUGH DEATH TO LOVE 

LIKE labor-laden moonclouds fain to flee 
From winds that sweep the winter-bitten wold, — 
Like multiform circumfluence manifold 
Of night's flood-tide, — like terrors that agree 
Of hoarse-tongued fire and inarticulate sea, — 

Even such, within some glass dimmed by our breath, 
Our hearts discern wild images of Death, 
Shadows and shoals that edge eternity. 

Howbeit athwart Death's imminent shade doth soar 
One Power, than flow of stream or flight of dove 
Sweeter to glide around, to brood above. 
Tell me, my heart, — what angel-greeted door 
Or threshold of wing-winnowed threshing-floor 

Hath guest fire-fledged as thine, whose lord is Love ? 
44 



Youth and Change 



HOPE OVERTAKEN 

I DEEMED thy garments, O my Hope, were gray, 
So far I viewed thee. Now the space between 
Is passed at length ; and garmented in green 
Even as in days of yore thou stand'st to-day. 
Ah God ! and but for lingering dull dismay, 
On all that road our footsteps erst had been 
Even thus commingled, and our shadows seen 
Blent on the hedgerows and the water-way. 

O Hope of mine whose eyes are living love. 

No eyes but hers, — O Love and Hope the same ! — 
Lean close to me, for now the sinking sun 
That warmed our feet scarce gilds our hair above. 
O hers thy voice and very hers thy name ! 
Alas, cling round me, for the day is done ! 
45 



The House of Life 



LOVE AND HOPE 

BLESS love and hope. Full many a withered year 
Whirled past us, eddying to its chill dooms-day ; 
And clasped together where the blown leaves lay, 
We long have knelt and wept full many a tear. 
Yet lo ! one hour at last, the Spring's compeer. 
Flutes softly to us from some green bye-way : 
Those years, those tears are dead, but only they: — 
Bless love and hope, true soul ; for we are here. 

Cling heart to heart; nor of this hour demand 
Whether in very truth, when we are dead. 
Our hearts shall wake to know Love's golden head 

Sole sunshine of the imperishable land ; 

Or but discern, through night's unfeatured scope, 
Scorn-fired at length the illusive eyes of Hope. 
46 



Youth and Change 



CLOUD AND WIND 

LOVE, should I fear death most for you or me ? 
Yet if you die, can I not follow you, 
Forcing the straits of change ? Alas ! but who 
Shall wrest a bond from night's inveteracy. 
Ere yet my hazardous soul put forth, to be 

Her warrant against all her haste might rue? — 
Ah ! in your eyes so reached what dumb adieu, 
What unsunned gyres of waste eternity? 

And if I die the first, shall death be then 

A lampless watchtower whence I see you weep? — 
Or (woe is me !) a bed wherein my sleep 
Ne'er notes (as death's dear cup at last you drain), 
The hour when you too learn that all is vain 

And that Hope sows what Love shall never reap ? 
47 



The House of Life 



SECRET PARTING 

BECAUSE our talk was of the cloud-control 
And moon-track of the journeying face of Fate, 
Her tremulous kisses faltered at love's gate 
And her eyes dreamed against a distant goal : 
But soon, remembering her how brief the whole 
Of joy, which its own hours annihilate, 
Her set gaze gathered, thirstier than of late, 
And as she kissed, her mouth became her soul. 

Thence in what ways we wandered, and how strove 
To build with fire-tried vows the piteous home 
Which memory haunts and whither sleep may 
roam, — 
They only know for whom the roof of Love 
Is the still-seated secret of the grove. 

Nor spire may rise nor bell be heard therefrom. 
48 



Youth and Change 



PARTED LOVE 

WHAT shall be said of this embattled day 
And armed occupation of this night 
By all thy foes beleaguered, — now when sight 
Nor sound denotes the loved one far away? 
Of these thy vanquished hours what shalt thou say,- 
As every sense to which she dealt delight 
Now labors lonely o'er the stark noon-height 
To each the sunset's desolate disarray? 

Stand still fond fettered wretch while Memory's art 
Parades the Past before thy face, and lures 
Thy spirit to her passionate portraitures : 
Till the tempestuous tide-gates flung apart 
Flood with wild will the hollows of thy heart, 
And thy heart rends thee, and thy body endures. 
4 49 



The House of Life 



BROKEN MUSIC 

THE mother will not turn, who thinks she hears 
Her nursling's speech first grow articulate ; 
But breathless with averted eyes elate 
She sits, with open lips and open ears, 
That it may call her twice. 'Mid doubts and fears 
Thus oft my soul has hearkened ; till the song, 
A central moan for days, at length found tongue, 
And the sweet music welled and the sweet tears. 

But now, whatever while the soul is fain 
To list that wonted murmur, as it were 

The speech-bound sea-shell's low importunate strain, - 
No breath of song, thy voice alone is there, 

O bitterly beloved ! and all her gain 
Is but the pang of unpermitted prayer. 
SO 



Youth and Change 



DEATH-IN-LOVE 

THERE came an image in Life's retinue 
That had Love's wings and bore his gonfalon : 
Fair was the web, and nobly wrought thereon, 
O soul-sequestered face, thy form and hue ! 
Bewildering sounds, such as Spring wakens to, 

Shook in its folds ; and through my heart its power 
Sped trackless as the immemorable hour 
When birth's dark portal groaned and all was new. 

But a veiled woman followed, and she caught 
The banner round its staff, to furl and chng, — 
Then plucked a feather from the bearer's wing, 

And held it to his Hps that stirred it not. 

And said to me, " Behold, there is no breath: 
I and this Love are one, and I am Death." 
SI 



The House of Life 



WILLOWVVOOD 



I SAT with Love upon a woodside well, 
Leaning across the water, I and he ; 
Nor ever did he speak nor look at me. 
But touched his lute wherein was audible 
The certain secret thing he had to tell : 
Only our mirrored eyes met silently 
In the low wave ; and that sound came to be 
The passionate voice I knew ; and my tears fell. 

And at their fall, his eyes beneath grew hers ; 
And with his foot and with his wingf-feathers 

He swept the spring that watered my heart's drouth. 
Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair, 
And as I stooped, her own lips rising there 

Bubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth, 
52 



Youth and Change 



II 



And now Love sang ; but his was such a song, 
So meshed with half-remembrance hard to free, 
As souls disused in death's sterility 

May sing when the new birthday tarries long. 

And I was made aware of a dumb throng 
That stood aloof, one form by every tree. 
All mournful forms, for each was I or she. 

The shades of those our days that had no tongue. 

They looked on us, and knew us and were known ; 
While fast together, alive from the abyss. 
Clung the soul-wrung implacable close kiss ; 
And pity of self through all made broken moan 
Which said, " For once, for once, for once alone ! " 
And still Love sang, and what he sang was this : 
53 



The House of Life 



III 



" O ye, all ye that walk in Willowvvood, 

That walk with hollow faces burning white ; 
What fathom-depth of soul-struck widowhood, 

What long, what longer hours, one life-long night, 
Ere ye again, who so in vain have wooed 

Your last hope lost, who so in vain invite 
Your lips to that their unforgotten food. 

Ere ye, ere ye again shall see the light ! 

Alas ! the bitter banks in Willowwood, 

With tear-spurge wan, with blood-wort burning red : 
Alas ! if ever such a pillow could 

Steep deep the soul in sleep till she were dead, — 
Better all life forget her than this thing. 
That Willowwood should hold her wandering ! " 

54 



Youth and Change 



IV 



So sang he : and as meeting rose and rose 
Together cling through the wind's well-away 
Nor change at once, yet near the end of day 

The leaves drop loosened where the heart-stain 
glows, — 

So when the song died did the kiss unclose ; 

And her face fell back drowned, and was as gray 
As its gray eyes ; and if it ever may 

Meet mine again I know not if Love knows. 

Only I know that I leaned low and drank 

A long draught from the water where she sank, 

Her breath and all her tears and all her soul : 
And as I leaned, I know I felt Love's face 
Pressed on my neck with moan of pity and grace, 

Till both our heads were in his aureole. 
55 



The House of Life 



WITHOUT HER 

WHAT of her glass v/Ithout her? The blank 
gray 
There where the pool is blind of the moon's face. 
Her dress without her? The tossed empty space 
Of cloud-rack whence the moon has passed away. 
Her paths without her? Day's appointed sway 
Usurped by desolate night. Her pillowed place 
Without her? Tears, ah me ! for love's good grace, 
And cold forgetfulness of night or day. 

What of the heart without her? Nay, poor heart, 
Of thee what word remains ere speech be still? 
A wayfarer by barren ways and chill. 
Steep ways and weary, without her thou art. 
Where the long cloud, the long wood's counterpart, 
Sheds doubled darkness up the laboring hill. 

56 



Youth and Change 



LOVE'S FATALITY 

SWEET Love, — but oh ! most dread Desire of 
Love 
Life-thwarted. Linked in gyves I saw them stand, 
Love shackled with Vain-longing, hand to hand : 
And one was eyed as the blue vault above : 
But hope tempestuous like a fire-cloud hove 
r the other's gaze, even as in his whose wand 
Vainly all night with spell-wrought power has 
spann'd 
The unyielding caves of some deep treasure-trove. 

Also his lips, two writhen flakes of flame, 

Made moan : " Alas, O Love, thus leashed with me ! 
Wing-footed thou, wing-shouldered, once born free : 
And I, thy cowering self, in chains grown tame, — 
Bound to thy body and soul, named with thy name, — 
Life's iron heart, even Love's Fatality." 
57 



The House of Life 



STILLBORN LOVE 

THE hour which might have been yet might not be, 
Which man's and woman's heart conceived and 
bore 
Yet whereof life was barren, — on what shore 
Bides it the breaking of Time's weary sea? 
Bondchild of all consummate joys set free, 

It somewhere sighs and serves, and mute before 
The house of Love, hears through the echoing door 
His hours elect in choral consonancy. 

But lo ! what wedded souls now hand in hand 
Together tread at last the immortal strand 
With eyes where burning memory lights love 
home? 
Lo ! how the little outcast hour has turned 
And leaped to them and in their faces yearned : — 
'' I am your child : O parents, ye have come ! " 
58 



Youth and Change 



TRUE WOMAN 

I. HERSELF 

TO be a sweetness more desired than Spring; 
A bodily beauty more acceptable 
Than the wild rose-tree's arch that crowds the fell ; 
To be an essence more environing 
Than wine's drained juice ; a music ravishing 
More than the passionate pulse of Philomel ; — 
To be all this 'neath one soft bosom's swell 
That is the flower of life : — how strange a thing ! 

How strange a thing to be what Man can know 

But as a sacred secret ! Heaven's own screen 
Hides her soul's purest depth and loveliest glow; 
Closely withheld, as all things most unseen, — 
The wave-bowered pearl, — the heart-shaped seal 
of green 
That flecks the snowdrop underneath the snow. 

59 



The House of Life 



II. HER LOVE 

She loves him ; for her infinite soul is Love, 
And he her lodestar. Passion in her is 
A glass facing his fire, where the bright bliss 

Is mirrored, and the heat returned. Yet move 

That glass, a stranger's amorous flame to prove, 
And it shall turn, by instant contraries. 
Ice to the moon ; while her pure fire to his 

For whom it burns, clings close i' the heart's alcove. 

Lo ! they are one. With wifely breast to breast 
And circling arms, she welcomes all command 
Of love, — her soul to answering ardours fann'd : 
Yet as morn springs or twilight sinks to rest, 
Ah ! who shall say she deems not loveliest 
The hour of sisterly sweet hand-in-hand ? 
60 



Youth and Change 



III. HER HEAVEN 

If to grow old in Heaven is to grow young, 

(As the Seer saw and said,) then blest were he 
With youth for evermore, whose heaven should be 

True Woman, she whom these weak notes have sung. 

Here and hereafter, — choir-strains of her tongue, — 
Sky-spaces of her eyes, — sweet signs that flee 
About her soul's immediate sanctuary, — 

Were Paradise all uttermost worlds among. 

The sunrise blooms and withers on the hill 
Like any hillflower ; and the noblest troth 
Dies here to dust. Yet shall Heaven's promise 
clothe 
Even yet those lovers who have cherished still 
This test for love : in every kiss sealed fast 
To feel the first kiss and forebode the last. 
6i 



The House of Life 



LOVE'S LAST GIFT 

LOVE to his singer held a glistening leaf, 
And said : " The rose-tree and the apple-tree 
Have fruits to vaunt or flowers to lure the bee ; 
And golden shafts are in the feathered sheaf 
Of the great harvest-marshal, the year's chief. 
Victorious Summer ; aye, and 'neath warm sea 
Strange secret grasses lurk inviolably 
Between the filtering channels of sunk reef. 

All are my blooms ; and all sweet blooms of love 
To thee I gave while Spring and Summer sang; 
But Autumn stops to listen, with some pang 

From those worse things the wind is moaning of. 
Only this laurel dreads no winter days : 
Take my last gift ; thy heart hath sung my praise.' 
62 



PART II 
CHANGE AND FATE 



63 



TRANSFIGURED LIFE 

AS growth of form or momentary glance 
In a child's features will re-call to mind 
The father's with the mother's face combin'd, — 
Sweet interchange that memories still enhance : 
And yet, as childhood's years and youth's advance, 
The gradual mouldings leave one stamp behind, 
Till in the blended likeness now we find 
A separate man's or woman's countenance : — 

So in the Song, the singer's Joy and Pain, 

Its very parents, evermore expand 
To bid the passion's fullgrown birth remain, 

By Art's transfiguring essence subtly spann'd ; 

And from that song-cloud shaped as a man's hand 
There comes the sound as of abundant rain. 
5 6s 



The House of Life 



THE SONG-THROE 

BY thine own tears thy song must tears beget, 
O Singer ! Magic mirror thou hast none 
Except thy manifest heart ; and save thine own 
Anguish or ardour, else no amulet. 
Cisterned in Pride, verse is the feathery jet 
Of soulless air-flung fountains; nay, more dry 
Than the Dead Sea for throats that thirst and sigh, 
That song o'er which no singer's lids grew wet. 

The Song-god — He the Sun-god — is no slave 
Of thine : thy Hunter he, who for thy soul 
Fledges his shaft : to no august control 

Of thy skilled hand his quivered store he gave : 
But if thy lips' loud cry leap to his smart. 
The inspir'd recoil shall pierce thy brother's heart. 
66 



Change and Fate 



THE SOUL'S SPHERE 

SOME prisoned moon in steep cloud-fastnesses, — 
Throned queen and thralled ; some dying sun 
whose pyre 
Blazed with momentous memorable fire ; — 
Who hath not yearned and fed his heart with these? 
Who, sleepless, hath not anguished to appease 
Tragical shadows' realm of sound and sight 
Conjectured in the lamentable night? . . . 
Lo ! the soul's sphere of infinite images ! 

What sense shall count them? Whether it forecast 
The rose-winged hours that flutter in the van 
Of Love's unquestioning unreveal^d span, — 

Visions of golden futures : or that last 

Wild pageant of the accumulated past 

That clangs and flashes for a drowning man. 

67 



The House of Life 



INCLUSIVENESS 

THE changing guests, each in a dififerent mood, 
Sit at the roadside table and arise : 
And every Hfe among them in Hkewise 
Is a soul's board set daily with new food. 
What man has bent over his son's sleep, to brood 
How that face shall watch his when cold it lies? — 
Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes. 
Of what her kiss was when his father wooed ? 

May not this ancient room thou sit'st in dwell 
In separate living souls for joy or pain? 
Nay, all its corners may be painted plain 

Where Heaven shows pictures of some Hfe spent well ; 
And may be stamped, a memory all in vain, 

Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell. 

68 



Change and Fate 



ARDOUR AND MEMORY 

THE cuckoo-throb, the heartbeat of the Spring; 
The rosebud's blush that leaves it as it grows 
Into the full-eyed fair unblushing rose ; 
The summer clouds that visit every wing 
With fires of sunrise and of sunsetting ; 

The furtive flickering streams to light reborn 
'Mid airs new-fledged and valorous lusts of morn, 
While all the daughters of the daybreak sing : — 

These ardour loves, and memory: and when flown 
All joys, and through dark forest-boughs in flight 
The wind swoops onward brandishing the light, 
Even yet the rose-tree's verdure left alone 
Will flush all ruddy though the rose be gone ; 
With ditties and with dirges infinite. 

69 



The House of Life 



KNOWN IN VAIN 

AS two whose love, first foolish, widening scope, 
Knows suddenly, to music high and soft. 
The Holy of holies; who because they scoff 'd 
Are now amazed with shame, nor dare to cope 
With the whole truth aloud, lest heaven should ope; 
Yet, at their meetings, laugh not as they laugh'd 
In speech ; not speak, at length ; but sitting oft 
Together, within hopeless sight of hope 
For hours are silent : — So it happeneth 

When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze 
After their life sailed by, and hold their breath. 

Ah ! who shall dare to search through what sad 

maze 
Thenceforth their incommunicable ways 
Follow the desultory feet of Death? 

70 



Change and Fate 



THE HEART OF THE NIGHT 

FROM child to youth; from youth to arduous 
man; 
From lethargy to fever of the heart; 
From faithful life to dream-dowered days apart; 
From trust to doubt from doubt to brink of ban ; — 
Thus much of change in one swift cycle ran 

Till now. Alas, the soul ! — how soon must she 
Accept her primal immortality, — 
The flesh resume its dust whence it began? 

O Lord of work and peace ! O Lord of life ! 
O Lord, the awful Lord of will ! though late, 
Even yet renew this soul with duteous breath : 

That when the peace is garnered in from strife, 
The work retrieved, the will regenerate, 

This soul may see thy face, O Lord of death ! 

71 



The House of Life 



THE LANDMARK 

WAS that the landmark? What, — the foolish 
well 
Whose wave, low down, I did not stoop to drink, 
But sat and flung the pebbles from its brink 
In sport to send its imaged skies pell-mell, 
(And mine own image, had I noted well !) — 
Was that my point of turning? — I had thought 
The stations of my course should rise unsought, 
As altar-stone or ensigned citadel. 

But lo ! the path is missed, I must go back. 

And thirst to drink when next I reach the spring 
Which once I stained, which since may have grown 
black. 
Yet though no light be left nor bird now sing 
As here I turn, I'll thank God, hastening, 
That the same goal is still on the same track. 

72 



Change and Fate 



A DARK DAY 

THE gloom that breathes upon me with these airs 
Is like the drops which strike the traveller's brow 
Who knows not, darkling, if they bring him now 
Fresh storm, or be old r^in the covert bears. 
Ah ! bodes this hour some harvest of new tares, 
Or hath but memory of the day whose plough 
Sowed hunger once, — the night at length when 
thou, 
O prayer found vain, didst fall from out my prayers? 

How prickly were the growths which yet how smooth. 
Along the hedgerows of this journey shed. 

Lie by Time's grace till night and sleep may soothe ! 
Even as the thistledown from pathsides dead 

Gleaned by a girl in autumns of her youth. 

Which one new year makes soft her marriage-bed. 
73 



The House of Life 



AUTUMN IDLENESS 

THIS sunlight shames November where he grieves 
In dead red leaves, and will not let him shun 
The day, though bough with bough be overrun. 
But with a blessing every glade receives 
High salutation ; while from hillock-eaves 

The deer gaze calling, dappled white and dun, 
As if, being foresters of old, the sun 
Had marked them with the shade of forest-leaves. 

Here dawn to-day unveiled her magic glass ; 

Here noon now gives the thirst and takes the dew ; 
Till eve bring rest when other good things pass. 

And here the lost hours the lost hours renew 
While I still lead my shadow o'er the grass, 

Nor know, for longing, that which I should do. 
74 



Change and Fate 



THE HILL SUMMIT 

THIS feast-day of the sun, his altar there 
In the broad west has blazed for vesper-song; 
And I have loitered in the vale too long 
And gaze now a belated worshipper. 
Yet may I not forget that I was 'ware, 
So journeying, of his face at intervals 
Transfigured where the fringed horizon falls, — 
A fiery bush with coruscating hair. 

And now that I have climbed and won this height, 
I must tread downward through the sloping shade 

And travel the bewildered tracks till night. 
Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed 
And see the gold air and the silver fade 

And the last bird fly into the last light. 

75 



The House of Life 



THE CHOICE 



EAT thou and drink ; to-morrow thou shalt die. 
Surely the earth, that 's wise being very old, 
Needs not our help. Then loose me, love, and hold 
Thy sultry hair up from my face ; that I 
May pour for thee this golden wine, brim-high, 
Till round the glass thy fingers glow like gold. 
We '11 drown all hours : thy song, while hours are 
toll'd, 
Shall leap, as fountains veil the changing sky. 

Now kiss, and think that there are really those, 
My own high-bosomed beauty, who increase 

Vain gold, vain lore, and yet might choose our 

way ! 
Through many years they toil ; then on a day 
They die not, — for their life was death, — but cease ; 
And round their narrow lips the mould falls close. 

76 



Change and Fate 



II 



Watch thou and fear ; to-morrow thou shalt die. 
Or art thou sure thou shah have time for death? 
Is not the day which God's word promiseth 
To come man knows not when? In yonder sky, 
Now while we speak, the sun speeds forth : can I 
Or thou assure him of his goal? God's breath 
Even at this moment haply quickeneth 
The air to a flame ; till spirits, always nigh 
Though screened and hid, shall walk the daylight 
here. 
And dost thou prate of all that man shall do? 
Canst thou, who hast but plagues, presume to be 
Glad in his gladness that comes after thee ? 
Will his strength slay thy worm in Hell? Go to : 
Cover thy countenance, and watch, and fear. 

77 



The House of Life 



III 



Think thou and act ; to-morrow thou shalt die. 
Outstretched in the sun's warmth upon the shore, 
Thou say'st : *' Man's measured path is all gone o'er : 

Up all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh, 

Man clomb until he touched the truth ; and I, 
Even I, am he whom it was destined for." 
How should this be? Art thou then so much more 

Than they who sowed, that thou shouldst reap 
thereby ? 

Nay, come up hither. From this wave-washed mound 
Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me ; 

Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown'd. 
Miles and miles distant though the last line be. 

And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues 
beyond, — 
Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea. 

78 



Change and Fate 



OLD AND NEW ART 

I. ST. LUKE THE PAINTER 

GIVE honor unto Luke Evangelist ; 
For he it was (the aged legends say) 
Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray. 
Scarcely at once she dared to rend the mist 
Of devious symbols : but soon having wist 

How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day 
Are symbols also in some deeper way, 
She looked through these to God and was God's 
priest. 

And if, past noon, her toil began to irk, 

And she sought talismans, and turned in vain 
To soulless self-reflections of man's skill, — 
Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still 
Kneel in the latter grass to pray again. 
Ere the night cometh and she may not work. 

79 



The House of Life 



II. NOT AS THESE 

'* I am not as these are," the poet saith 
In youth's pride, and the painter, among men 
At bay, where never pencil comes nor pen, 

And shut about with his own frozen breath. 

To others, for whom only rhyme wins faith 
As poets, — only paint as painters, — then 
He turns in the cold silence ; and again 

Shrinking, " I am not as these are," he saith. 

And say that this is so, what follows it ? 

For were thine eyes set backwards in thine head. 
Such words were well ; but they see on, and far. 
Unto the lights of the great Past, new-lit 

Fair for the Future's track, look thou instead, — 
Say thou instead, " I am not as these are." 
80 



Change and Fate 



III. THE HUSBANDMEN 

Though God, as one that is an householder, 
Called these to labour in his vineyard first, 
Before the husk of darkness was well burst 
Bidding them grope their way out and bestir, 
(Who, questioned of their wages, answered, " Sir, 
Unto each man a penny: ") though the worst 
Burthen of heat was theirs and the dry thirst : 
Though God hath since found none such as these were 
To do their work like them : — Because of this 
Stand not ye idle in the market-place. 
Which of ye knoweth he is not the last 
Who may be first by faith and will? — yea, his 
The hand which after the appointed days 
And hours shall give a Future to their Past? 
6 8i 



The House of Life 



SOUL'S BEAUTY 

UNDER the arch of Life, where love and death, 
Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw 
Beauty enthroned ; and though her gaze struck awe, 
I drew it in as simply as my breath. 
Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath. 

The sky and sea bend on thee, — which can draw, 
By sea or sky or woman, to one law, 
The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath. 

This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise 

Thy voice and hand shake still, — long known to 
thee 
By flying hair and fluttering hem, — the beat 
Following her daily of thy heart and feet, 
How passionately and irretrievably, 
In what fond flight, how many ways and days ! . 

82 



Change and Fate 



BODY'S BEAUTY 

OF Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told 
(The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,) 
That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could 
deceive. 
And her enchanted hair was the first gold. 
And still she sits, young while the earth is old, 
And, subtly of herself contemplative. 
Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave, 
Till heart and body and life are in its hold. 

The rose and poppy are her flowers ; for where 

Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent 
And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare? 
Lo ! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went 
Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck 
bent 
And round his heart one strangling golden hair, 

^3 



The House of Life 



THE MONOCHORD 

IS it this sky's vast vault or ocean's sound 
That is Life's self and draws my life from me, 
And by instinct ineffable decree 
Holds my breath quailing on the bitter bound? 
Nay, is it Life or Death, this thunder-crown'd, 
That 'mid the tide of all emergency 
Now notes my separate wave, and to what sea 
Its difficult eddies labor in the ground? 

Oh ! what is this that knows the road I came. 

The flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to flame, 

The lifted shifted steeps and all the way? — 
That draws round me at last this wind-warm space, 
And in regenerate rapture turns my face 

Upon the devious coverts of dismay? 
.84 



Change and Fate 



FROM DAWN TO NOON 

AS the child knows not if his mother's face 
Be fair ; nor of his elders yet can deem 
What each most is ; but as of hill or stream 
At dawn, all glimmering life surrounds his place : 
Who yet, tow'rd noon of his half-weary race. 
Pausing awhile beneath the high sunbeam 
And gazing steadily back, — as through a dream. 
In things long past new features now can trace : — 

Even so the thought that is at length full-grown 
Turns back to note the sun-smit paths, all gray 

And marvellous once, where first it walked alone ; 
And haply doubts, amid the unblenching day. 
Which most or least impelled its onward way, — 

Those unknown things or these things over-known. 

8s 



The House of Life 



MEMORIAL THRESHOLDS 

WHAT place so strange, — though unrevealed 
snow 
With unimaginable fires arise 
At the earth's end, — what passion of surprise 
Like frost-bound fire-girt scenes of long ago? 
Lo ! this is none but I this hour; and lo ! 
This is the very place which to mine eyes 
Those mortal hours in vain immortalize, 
'Mid hurrying crowds, with what alone I know. 

City, of thine a single simple door, 

By some new Power reduplicate, must be 
Even yet my life-porch in eternity, 
Even with one presence filled, as once of yore: 
Or mocking winds whirl round a chaff-strown floor 
Thee and thy years and these my words and me. 
86 



Change and Fate 



HOARDED JOY 

I SAID : '* Nay, pluck not, — let the first fruit be : 
Even as thou sayest, it is sweet and red, 
But let it ripen still. The tree's bent head 
Sees in the stream its own fecundity 
And bides the day of fulness. Shall not we 
At the sun's hour that day possess the shade, 
And claim our fruit before its ripeness fade, 
And eat it from the branch and praise the tree?" 

I say : '* Alas ! our fruit hath wooed the sun 

Too long, — 't is fallen and floats adown the stream. 

Lo, the last clusters ! Pluck them every one, 
And let us sup with summer ; ere the gleam 

Of autumn set the year's pent sorrow free. 

And the woods wail like echoes from the sea." 

87 



The House of Life 



BARREN SPRING 

ONCE more the changed year's turning wheel 
returns : 
And as a girl sails balanced in the wind, 
And now before and now again behind 
Stoops as it swoops, with cheek that laughs and 

burns, — 
So Spring comes merry towards me here, but earns 
No answering smile from me, whose life is twin'd 
With the dead boughs that winter still must bind, 
And whom to-day the Spring no more concerns. 

Behold, this crocus is a withering flame ; 

This snow-drop, snow ; this apple-blossom's part 
To breed the fruit that breeds the serpent's art. 

Nay, for these Spring-flowers, turn thy face from them, 

Nor stay till on the year's last lily-stem 

The white cup shrivels round the golden heart. 
88 



Change and Fate 



FAREWELL TO THE GLEN 

SWEET stream-fed glen, why say " farewell " to 
thee 
Who far'st so well and find'st for ever smooth 
The brow of Time where man may read no ruth? 
Nay, do thou rather say " farewell " to me, 
Who now fare forth in bitterer fantasy 

Than erst was mine where other shade might soothe 
By other streams, what while in fragrant youth 
The bliss of being sad made melancholy. 

And yet, farewell ! For better shalt thou fare 
When children bathe sweet faces in thy flow 

And happy lovers blend sweet shadows there 
In hours to come, than when an hour ago 

Thine echoes had but one man's sighs to bear 
And thy trees whispered what he feared to know. 
89 



The House of Life 



VAIN VIRTUES 

WHAT is the sorriest thing that enters Hell? 
None of the sins, — but this and that fair deed 
Which a soul's sin at length could supersede. 
These yet are virgins, whom death's timely knell 
Might once have sainted ; whom the fiends compel 
Together now, in snake-bound shuddering sheaves 
Of anguish, while the pit's pollution leaves 
Their refuse maidenhood abominable. 

Night sucks them down, the tribute of the pit, 
Whose names, half entered in the book of Life, 
Were God's desire at noon. And as their hair 
And eyes sink last, the Torturer deigns no whit 
To gaze, but, yearning, waits his destined wife, 
The Sin still blithe on earth that sent them there. 
90 



Change and Fate 



LOST DAYS 

THE lost days of my life until to-day, 
What were they, could I see them on the street 
Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat 
Sown once for food but trodden into clay? 
Or golden coins squandered and still to pay? 
Or drops of blood dabbhng the guilty feet? 
Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat 
The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway? 

I do not see them here ; but after death 
God knows I know the faces I shall see, 

Each one a murdered self, with low last breath. 
" I am thyself, — what hast thou done to me? " 

" And I — and I — thyself," (lo ! each one saith,) 
'' And thou thyself to all eternity ! " 
91 



The House of Life 



DEATH'S SONGSTERS 

WHEN first that horse, within whose populous 
womb 
The birth was death, o'ershadowed Troy with fate, 
Her elders, dubious of its Grecian freight, 
Brought Helen there to sing the songs of home ; 
She whispered, '* Friends, I am alone ; come, come ! " 
Then, crouched within, Ulysses waxed afraid, 
And on his comrades' quivering mouths he laid 
His hands, and held them till the voice was dumb. 

The same was he who, lashed to his own mast. 
There where the sea-flowers screen the charnel- 
caves, 
Beside the sirens' singing island pass'd, 

Till sweetness failed along the inveterate waves. . . 
Say, soul, — are songs of Death no heaven to thee, 
Nor shames her lip the cheek of Victory? 

92 



Change and Fate 



HERO'S LAMP 

THAT lamp thou fiU'st in Eros' name to-night, 
O Hero, shall the Sestian augurs take 
To-morrow, and for drowned Leander's sake 
To Anteros its fireless lip shall plight. 
Ay, waft the unspoken vow : yet dawn's first light 
On ebbing storm and Hfe twice ebb'd must break ; 
While 'neath no sunrise, by the Avernian Lake, 
Lo, where Love walks, Death's pallid neophyte. 

That lamp within Anteros' shadowy shrine 
Shall stand unlit (for so the gods decree) 
Till some one man the happy issue see 
Of a life's love, and bid its flame to shine : 
Which still may rest unfir'd ; for, theirs or thine, 
O brother, what brought love to them or thee ? 
93 



The House of Life 



THE TREES OF THE GARDEN 

YE who have passed Death's haggard hills ; and ye 
Whom trees that knew your sires shall cease to 
know 
And still stand silent : — is it all a show, — • 
A wisp that laughs upon the wall? — decree 
Of some inexorable supremacy 

Which ever, as man strains his blind surmise 
From depth to ominous depth, looks past his eyes, 
Sphinx-faced with unabashed augury? 

Nay, rather question the Earth's self. Invoke 
The storm-felled forest-trees moss-grown to-day 
Whose roots are hillocks where the children play ; 
Or ask the silver sapling 'neath what yoke 

Those stars, his spray-crown's clustering gems, 

shall wage 

Their journey still when his boughs shrink with age. 
94 



Change and Fate 



"RETRO ME, SATHANAI" 

GET thee behind me. Even as, heavy-curled, 
Stooping against the wind, a charioteer 

Is snatched from out his chariot by the hair, 
So shall Time be ; and as the void car, hurled 
Abroad by reinless steeds, even so the world : 

Yea, even as chariot-dust upon the air, 

It shall be sought and not found anywhere. 
Get thee behind me, Satan. Oft unfurled. 
Thy perilous wings can beat and break like lath 

Much mightiness of men to win thee praise. 

Leave these weak feet to tread in narrow ways. 
Thou still, upon the broad vine-sheltered path, 
Mayst wait the turning of the phials of wrath 

For certain years, for certain months and days. 
95 



The House of Life 



LOST ON BOTH SIDES 

AS when two men have loved a woman well, 
Each hating each, through Love's and Death's 
deceit; 
Since not for either this stark marriage-sheet 
And the long pauses of this wedding-bell; 
Yet o'er her grave the night and day dispel 
At last their feud forlorn, with cold and heat ; 
Nor other than dear friends to death may fleet 
The two lives left that most of her can tell : — 

So separate hopes, which in a soul had wooed 
The one same Peace, strove with each other long, 
And Peace before their faces perished since : 
So through that soul, in restless brotherhood, 
They roam together now, the wind among 
Its bye-streets, knocking at the dusty inns. 
96 



Change and Fate 



THE SUN'S SHAME 



BEHOLDING youth and hope in mockery caught 
From life ; and mocking pulses that remain 
When the soul's death of bodily death is fain ; 
Honor unknown, and honor known unsought; 
And penury's sedulous self-torturing thought 
On gold, whose master therewith buys his bane ; 
And longed-for woman longing all in vain 
For lonely man with love's desire distraught; 
And wealth, and strength, and power, and pleas- 
antness. 
Given unto bodies of whose souls men say, 
None poor and weak, slavish and foul, as they : — 
Beholding these things, I behold no less 
The blushing morn and blushing eve confess 
The shame that loads the intolerable day. 
7 97 



The House of Life 



II 

As some true chief of men, bowed down with stress 
Of life's disastrous eld, on blossoming youth 
May gaze, and murmur with self-pity and ruth, — 

** Might I thy fruitless treasure but possess. 

Such blessing of mine all coming years should 
bless;" — 
Then sends one sigh forth to the unknown goal, 
And bitterly feels breathe against his soul 

The hour swift-winged of nearer nothingness : — 

Even so the World's gray Soul to the green World 
Perchance one hour must cry: ** Woe 's me, for 

whom 
Inveteracy of ill portends the doom, — 

Whose heart's old fire in shadow of shame is furl'd; 
While thou even as of yore art journeying, 
All soulless now, yet merry with the Spring ! " 

98 



Change and Fate 



MICHELANGELO'S KISS 

GREAT Michelangelo, with age grown bleak 
And uttermost labors, having once o'ersaid 
All grievous memories on his long life shed, 
This worst regret to one true heart could speak: — 
That when, with sorrowing love and reverence meek, 

He stooped o'er sweet Colonna's dying bed, 
His Muse and dominant Lady, spirit-wed, — 
Her hand he kissed, but not her brow or cheek. 

O Buonarruoti, — good at Art's fire-wheels 
To urge her chariot ! — even thus the Soul, 
Touching at length some sorely-chastened goal. 

Earns oftenest but a little : her appeals 

Were deep and mute, — lowly her claim. Let be: 
What holds for her Death's garner? And for thee? 
99 



The House of Life 



THE VASE OF LIFE 

AROUND the vase of Life at your slow pace 
He has not crept, but turned it with his hands, 
And all its sides already understands. 
There, girt, one breathes alert for some great race ; 
Whose road runs far by sands and fruitful space ; 
Who laughs, yet through the jolly throng has 

pass'd ; 
Who weeps, nor stays for weeping ; who at last, 
A youth, stands somewhere crowned, with silent face. 

And he has filled this vase with wine for blood, 
With blood for tears, with spice for burning vow, 
With watered flowers for buried love most fit; 
And would have cast it shattered to the flood. 
Yet in Fate's name has kept it whole ; which now 
Stands empty till his ashes fall in it. 

I GO 



Change and Fate 



LIFE THE BELOVED 

AS thy friend's face, with shadow of soul o'erspread, 
Somewhile unto thy sight perchance hath been 
Ghastly and strange, yet never so is seen 
In thought, but to all fortunate favor wed ; 
As thy love's death-bound features never dead 
To memory's glass return, but contravene 
Frail fugitive days, and always keep, I ween, 
Than all new life a livelier lovelihead : — 

So Life herself, thy spirit's friend and love, 
Even still as Spring's authentic harbinger 
Glows with fresh hours for hope to glorify; 
Though pale she lay when in the winter grove 
Her funeral flowers were snow-flakes shed on her 
And the red wings of frost-fire rent the sky. 

lOI 



The House of Life 



A SUPERSCRIPTION 

LOOK In my face ; my name Is Might-have-been ; 
I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell ; 
Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell 
Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between ; 
Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen 

Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell 
Is now a shaken shadow intolerable, 
Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen. 

Mark me, how still I am ! But should there dart 
One moment through my soul the soft surprise 
Of that winged Peace which lulls the breath of 
sighs, — 

Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart 

Thy visage to mine ambush at thy heart 
Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes. 

I02 



Change and Fate 



HE AND I 

WHENCE came his feet into my field, and why? 
How is it that he sees it all so drear? 
How do I see his seeing, and how hear 
The name his bitter silence knows it by? 
This was the little fold of separate sky 

Whose pasturing clouds in the soul's atmosphere 
Drew living light from one continual year : 
How should he find it Hfeless? He, or I? 

Lo ! this new Self now wanders round my field, } 
With plaints for every flower, and for each tree 
A moan, the sighing wind's auxiliary: 
And o'er sweet waters of my life, that yield 
Unto his lips no draught but tears unseal'd. 
Even in my place he weeps. Even I, not he. 
103 



The House of Life 

NEW-BORN DEATH 

I 

TO-DAY Death seems to me an infant child 
Which her worn mother Life upon my knee 
Has set to grow my friend and play with me ; 
If haply so my heart might be beguil'd 
To find no terrors in a face so mild, — 
If haply so my weary heart might be 
Unto the new-born milky eyes of thee, 
O Death, before resentment reconcil'd. 

How long, O Death? And shall thy feet depart 
Still a young child's with mine, or wilt thou stand 

Fullgrown the helpful daughter of my heart, 
What time with thee indeed I reach the strand 

Of the pale wave which knows thee what thou art, 
And drink it in the hollow of thy hand? 
104 



Change and Fate 



II 



And thou, O Life, the lady of all bliss, 

With whom, when our first heart beat full and fast, 
I wandered till the haunts of men were pass'd, 

And in fair places found all bowers amiss 

Till only woods and waves might hear our kiss, 

While to the winds all thought of Death we cast: — 
Ah, Life ! and must I have from thee at last 

No smile to greet me and no babe but this? 

Lo ! Love, the child once ours ; and Song, whose hair 
Blew like a flame and blossomed like a wreath ; 

And Art, whose eyes were worlds by God found fair ; 
These o'er the book of Nature mixed their breath 

With neck-twined arms, as oft we watched them there : 
And did these die that thou mightst bear me Death ? 
105 



The House of Life 



THE ONE HOPE 

WHEN vain desire at last and vain regret 
Go hand in hand to death, and all is vain, 
What shall assuage the unforgotten pain 
And teach the unforgetful to forget? 
Shall Peace be still a sunk stream long unmet, — 
Or may the soul at once in a green plain 
Stoop through the spray of some sweet life-fountain 
And cull the dew-drenched flowering amulet? 

Ah! when the wan soul in that golden air 
Between the scriptured petals softly blown 
Peers breathless for the gift of grace unknown, — 
Ah ! let none other alien spell soe'er 
But only the one Hope's one name be there, — 
Not less nor more, but even that word alone. 
1 06 



DEC 13 1902 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 528 652 9 



